Original meaning: live alone
Depicts a person living alone in a house (宀). The decorative strokes around the 頁 component corrupted into the unrelated 分.
Components
Character Evolution
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | kwaeX | [C.k]ʷˤraʔ | few |
說文解字
《說文》：“寡，少也。从宀，从頒。頒，分賦也，故為少。”
Sources
- Character origin
- Wiktionary漢語多功能字庫
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)
Simplified
Phonosemantic compound. 頁 represents the meaning and 豆 represents the sound. The simplified character 头 was adapted from the cursive form of the traditional character 頭.
Components
豆 SoundSimplified component
頁 IconicSimplified component
Depicts a head on top of a person.
Traditional
Components
Character Evolution
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | duw | [m-t]ˤo | head |
說文解字
《說文》：“頭，首也。从頁，豆聲。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 漢語多功能字庫
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)